How Social Media is Damaging Communication Skills of Our Kids & What Parents Can Do About it

Parents are often the only shot any of us have at having a success-mentor in life. Being a parent success-mentor isn’t easy. It requires that you say “no” a lot. It requires that you monitor your children. It requires that you become a disciplinarian. But most importantly, it requires that you set an example for your children. Being a parent success-mentor means you need to walk the walk AND talk the talk.

Thanks to all of the recent advances in technology, communication has become more efficient. Today’s phones, emails and social media have displaced the art of conversation and now make it possible to communicate thoughts and ideas with a few keystrokes. Carrying on a fifteen minute conversation has become passé. Now you can say what you want to say and move on. While technology has increased our ability to communicate efficiently, the fallout is the loss of effective communication that is only possible with one on one dialogue. One of the struggles employers have with the millenial generation is their inability to communicate effectively and carry on a meaningful conversation. This deficiency shows up on college and job interviews, which requires extensive one on one dialogue. The inability of millennia’s to engage in effective one on one dialogue makes it difficult to get into choice colleges or secure that ideal job. Parents need to teach their children how to communicate effectively if they want their children to be successful in life. What follows are some communication strategies parents should teach their kids if they want them to become happy and successful in life as adults.

Introducing Yourself

In life you will have many opportunities to meet new people. The more successful you become, the more new people you’ll meet. These meetings represent an incredible opportunity to develop valuable relationships. Some may be your next employer, future spouse, next best friend, future co-worker, next mentor, an investor or future business partner. There are 5 basic rules to making introductions:

Smile.

Firm Handshake.

Make Eye Contact.

Tell them who you are, why you’re here and who you know at the event.

Ask questions about the person you are introducing yourself to. We already covered that so let’s move on.

Engaging in Conversation

Your children are going to meet a lot of people in life. I found there’s a common thread that runs through everyone. They are single-mindedly focused on themselves. Most people are thinking about one thing during every conversation – themselves. Everyone thinks they are the most important person in the world. It’s a human tendency to be selfish and this shows up everywhere, including when we are carrying on a conversation with people. It’s a very important concept to grasp. When you run into these new people in life you need a plan, a process to help you turn every relationship into gold. Part of that process is to learn as much about your relationships as possible and you do that by asking questions abut them. Get to know them. Always focus on the other person and resist that human tendency to put yourself first. Make being unselfish in conversations a Rich Habit by asking these questions to every new person you meet in life:

Tom Corley understands the difference between being rich and poor: at age nine, his family went from being multi-millionaires to broke in just one night, due to a catastrophic fire that destroyed his Dad's thriving business. For fourteen years they struggled with poverty. There were eleven in Tom's family, and they lived in constant fear of losing their home.

Driven by the desire to unlock the secrets to success and failure, Tom spent five years studying the daily activities of 233 rich people and 128 poor people. He discovered there was an immense difference between the habits of the rich and the poor. During his research he identified over 300 daily activities that separated the “haves” from the “have nots.” Tom decided to write a book to share what he learned. That book, Rich Habits: The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals (1st Edition), went on to become an Amazon Bestseller in the United States forty times over a three year period. To give you some perspective, in order to be a true Amazon Bestseller in the United States, where you actually receive a specific Bestseller designation from Amazon, you need to be in the top 100 of all books sold by Amazon in the United States in a given day. Rich Habits did that for nearly thirty straight days, rising as high as #7, eclipsing such Bestselling authors such as Stephen Covey, Robert Kiyosaki and J.K. Rowlings. Imagine that - an unknown, first-time, self-published author selling more books than J.K. Rowlings!

Tom now travels the world, sharing his Rich Habits and motivating audiences at industry conferences, corporate events, universities, multi-level marketing group events, and global sales organizations’ presentations and finance conferences. He has even spoken on the same stage with famous entrepreneurs and personal development experts, such as Sir Richard Branson, Robin Sharma, Dr. Daniel Amen, and many others.

Tom has shared his insights on various national and international network, cable, and Internet television programs such as CBS Evening News, NBC News, Yahoo Financially Fit, Money.com, India TV, News.com Australia, and a host of others. He has been interviewed on many prestigious nationally syndicated radio shows, including the Dave Ramsey Show, Marketplace Money, and WABC.

Tom has been featured in numerous print magazines—such as Money magazine, Inc. Magazine, SUCCESS Magazine, Entrepreneur magazine, Fast Company magazine, More magazine, Epoca Magazine (Brazil’s largest weekly) and Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine—and various online publications, including USA Today, CNN, MSN Money, SUCCESS.com, Inc.com, and the Huffington Post. Tom is a frequent contributor to Business Insider, Credit.com, Bankrate.com and a few other media outlets.

National publicity has garnered international media attention for Tom and his Rich Habits research spanning 23 countries. Broadcast media, online publications, and television throughout Asia, the South Pacific, Europe, the United Kingdom, and Central and South America have shared his powerful message.

In an effort to help parents, grandparents, teachers and adults become success mentors to the younger generation, Tom released his second book, Rich Kids: How to Raise Our Children to be Happy and Successful in Life in 2014. This book was the self-help category winner of the 2015 New York Book Festival and Runner-up in the prestigious 2015 Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards Contest. In 2016 Tom released his third book, Change Your Habits, Change Your Life. This book provides the latest science on habit change as well as more of Tom's unique research on the specific habits that helped transform 177 ordinary individuals into self-made millionaires.

Besides being an author, Tom is also a CPA, CFP, and hold a master’s degree in taxation. As president of Cerefice and Company, CPAs, Tom heads one of the premier financial firms in New Jersey.